


The Same Old Well, Without the Same Desire

by gamerfic



Series: In Sleep [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Dreamsharing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fade Sex, Fade Tongue, Lucid Dreaming, Nightmares, POV First Person, The Fade, Well of Sorrows, What Pride Had Wrought
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-23 04:57:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3755287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamerfic/pseuds/gamerfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lavellan's first dreams after drinking from the Well of Sorrows are troubled to say the least. Solas intervenes, perhaps against his better judgment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Same Old Well, Without the Same Desire

I didn't want to fall asleep.

In the first chaotic hours after my companions and I had burst through the _eluvian_ in the disused storage room, it had seemed easy enough to avoid. Indeed, I had wondered whether I would ever find another restful moment. When we staggered out into Skyhold's garden, the Inquisition's healers rushed in to bind up our various injuries, and I tried to explain what had happened as dozens of people gathered to see what all the fuss was about. All the while, the servants of Mythal murmured incessantly and distractingly inside my mind, and I could tell by the blank stares on the faces of everyone around me that nothing I said made sense. I was grateful when Cassandra interrupted me. "Thank you, Inquisitor," she said, "but your full report should wait until the war council has returned to Skyhold to hear it." I nodded and tried not to let my relief show.

I was clearly of no use to the Inquisition in my addled state, and our unexpected trip through the _eluvian_ meant that Josephine, Leliana, and Cullen had been inadvertently left behind in the Arbor Wilds, so I was content to let Cassandra take charge. She rose to the occasion with perfect confidence, giving orders and making decisions with the utter certainty of someone trained for leadership since childhood. I huddled on a bench near the rows of elfroot and blood lotus and crystal grace and listened as she dictated a message to be flown to the advisors by Leliana's fastest raven. As my head drooped and Morrigan openly glowered at me from the other side of the garden and the skin of cold water that Varric had brought me grew tepid in my hands, I thought, _They should have chosen Cassandra. The Inquisition deserves a real Seeker of Truth as its leader, not some ignorant Dalish warrior who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fact that anyone ever called me the Herald of Andraste is all the proof I need to know the gods aren't on our side._

My self-pity only inspired more vehement Elvhen interjections from the Well's servants, their words as incomprehensible to me as the dialect that Solas spoke. _Solas._ He was not in the garden now; I had last seen him when I had stumbled coming out of the _eluvian_. He had been there to stop me from falling, had caught me by the elbow and helped me to my feet. His eyes had met mine, and the profound sadness and grim disappointment I had seen in them had sent a chill down my spine. "What have you done, _ma vhenan_?" he had said, but before I could respond, Varric had come tumbling to the floor behind us and I had set the question aside. But now that we were out of immediate danger, I found that I could no longer avoid it.

Despite the weariness that threatened to root me to the bench, I stood up and walked away. Everyone else was too busy following Cassandra's orders to notice me leaving. As I passed mages and soldiers and nobles and stewards on my way into the keep, I kept expecting one of them to call out and interrupt me with some inane task that required my immediate attention, but all of them gave me a wide berth instead. _I must look even worse than I feel._

I had left the garden without any destination in mind, but I soon discovered that my feet had carried me across the main hall and toward the rotunda. I paused just outside Solas's door and wondered if it was a mistake to seek him out so soon. He had displayed little reaction to anything in the temple until we stood before the Well of Sorrows itself; perhaps his journeys in the Fade had already given him cause to suspect most of what had been revealed. All the same, I found it difficult to think that any elf, even Solas, could see and hear so much that contradicted our most ancient history without being affected by it. Remembering what I had learned about our mistakes, about the beings I had spent my entire life worshipping as gods, twisted my stomach into a sick knot and provoked a sudden, wordless cry from something deep within the Well. I drew in a shaky breath and fought for calm. I had made my choice for the sake of knowledge, and Solas had always aided me in my search for understanding before. Even if he disagreed with my methods, we could talk as we had always done until we reached an understanding. Filled with renewed determination, I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

He wasn't there.

I wandered around the room for a while, cut adrift, until I sat down hard on the canvas-covered sofa along one wall. Profound silence and the smell of fresh paint overwhelmed me. I recalled the last time I had walked through this room wondering if it would remain vacant forever, after the death of the spirit of wisdom that Solas had called a friend and his abrupt departure into the scarred emptiness of the Exalted Plains. Had I been this lost and confused without him then, before " _ar lath ma_ ," before our lips or bodies had ever met on this side of the Veil, when my feelings for him had been too new and uncertain to name? My gaze lingered on the unfinished panels of Solas's fresco, and I wondered what artistic techniques he would use to best depict my folly. A single sob caught in my throat and echoed up into the rafters.

"Inquisitor?" someone above me said in alarm. I looked up to see Cassandra, two stories up in the rookery, leaning over the railing to peer down at me with concern etched into her face. _Shit. She must have gone up there to send the raven to the Arbor Wilds._ "Stay where you are. I am coming to you." She disappeared from my view, and I heard the rickety staircase creaking as she rapidly descended to the rotunda. I briefly considered fleeing, but knew that it was futile. "What are you doing here?" she asked as she crossed the floor to stand in front of me.

 _"Ar manan - Din. Fenedhis."_ I had intended to speak to her in Common, but only Elvhen came out. "I mean - _Ir abelas,_ Cassandra. I'm waiting."

"Waiting for what?" she asked, in a tone that told me she already knew the answer. She rested a hand on my arm, and my lower lip quivered. I swallowed hard and bit the inside of my cheek as my eyes prickled, not wanting to cry in front of her. She grunted in exasperation, tightened her grip on me, and effortlessly hauled me to my feet. "No matter. It is obvious to everyone except you that you are exhausted. Whatever - _whoever_ \- this is about, you can wait just as easily in your own bedchamber."

" _Ame tel'da'len_ ," I protested as Cassandra dragged me into the main hall, but deep down I knew she was right. Even if she had understood me, I was sure she would have ignored me anyway.

"Sergeant," Cassandra called out to a soldier who was idling near the undercroft, "the Inquisitor will be indisposed tonight. Have the kitchens send some food up to her quarters, and post a guard at her door. She is not to be disturbed except by my command." As the sergeant hurried away to carry out his new orders, Cassandra leaned closer to me and spoke softly in my ear. "I saw Solas in the courtyard not long ago. Give him time. He will return."

" _Ma serannas_ , Cassandra." I blinked back fresh tears. "He thinks - at the _vir'abelasan_..."

She didn't let me finish. "You did the right thing, Inquisitor," she declared with a finality that would tolerate no contradictions - not from me, not from Solas, not from Mythal herself. "And even if Solas disagrees now with the choice that you made, in time he will come to understand it." Her last, unspoken implication was clear: _Or I will make him understand it._

"I hope you're right."

Cassandra pulled open the door to my quarters and practically shoved me through it. "This is a discussion for a later time. Rest, Inquisitor. Do nothing else until you have slept."

Alone in my room, I curled in on myself in the center of my lonely bed, with my meal untouched beside me and the balcony doors wide open to let in the frigid mountain air. I had begun to grow accustomed to the human way of life, to sleeping beneath a roof and behind thick walls and locked doors, but now such luxuries only reminded me of how far I was from home. I longed to cast off the trappings of _shemlen_ authority and run barefoot into the wilderness, to wander through the snow until I collapsed from sheer exhaustion beneath the stars. But as long as Cassandra's guard stood sentry at the door, escape would be impossible.

Even worse was the way that sleep stalked me. I had been dreading its arrival ever since I had returned to consciousness within the dry basin that the Well of Sorrows had once filled. Awake, I could distract myself from the Well's whispers and pretend that everything could still return to the way it was before. In the Fade, I would lose every defense I had against the power I had invited into myself. I wanted to walk out onto my balcony, where the hard stone and the cold night might keep me awake, but my body refused to leave my bed. I tried to maintain my alertness by inwardly replaying the half-forgotten stories and songs of my childhood, yet little by little, I slipped toward sleep as steadily as the sun dipping below the horizon...

My eyes snapped open. I wasn't sure how long they had been closed. The sky beyond my windows was now flat black, where before it had glowed golden with the rich hues of sunset. The faint sound of footsteps pacing on the balcony outside must have been what had awakened me. A shadow passed behind the fluttering curtains, and I sat up abruptly in bed. I would know that silhouette anywhere. "Solas?"

He stepped through the open door and into my bedchamber, his expression devoid of any understanding or compassion. "You've spoiled it," he said. "Unimaginable power and wisdom, lost forever because you thought your mind could contain it. You were wrong."

I pulled my knees to my chest and said quietly, "I did what seemed right at the time."

"It wasn't enough," said someone from behind me. I twisted around to see another Solas coming up the stairs. This version of him wore the armor of the sentinels of the Temple of Mythal. He threw back his hood to reveal that he bore Mythal's _vallaslin_ , so freshly inked that the skin around them was still red and swollen. The film of dried blood that covered his face cracked and flaked as he grinned joylessly. "You have enslaved yourself. You have enslaved us all."

I willed myself to turn away, but remained frozen in place. " _Ir abelas_ ," I sobbed.

" _Nya undalas em'an. Halam sahlin."_ A third version of Solas entered through another balcony door, looking as if he had stepped out of the terrible, tainted future I had seen in Redcliffe. He stood before me with his features wracked and corrupted by red lyrium and rage, his throat slashed open from ear to ear. "I died to save your life, and this is what you choose to do with it?" Water was pouring into the room from nowhere, swirling across the floor and lapping at his bare and bloody feet. "You must be stopped before you make things any worse."

"I wanted knowledge, the same as you do! Give me more time to understand it!"

The room darkened around me, as if some great power at the edges of my comprehension had dampened every source of light. " _Da'len_ , you will come to wish you had never asked for understanding," said a voice that belonged both to Solas and to something much larger than him. "You should be pleased to know so little. Shall I begin by telling you who I really am? What I have done, and what I will do?"

The predatory growl behind those words triggered a blind and primal panic in me, and I was out of the bed and running for the door before I knew what I was doing. The water was up to my hips now and rising quickly, its undertow slowing my movements to a futile crawl. A soundless bolt of green lightning revealed elven sentinels surrounding me with their bows drawn, each one of them wearing Solas's face. They loosed their arrows in unison, and I screamed as the sharp tips pierced my back, my chest, my belly, my throat. Each strike was a mortal wound that brought me agony without death. My blood streamed down into the Well and a dark stain spread around me. I fell to my knees and the waters rose past my neck. "You seek knowledge?" snarled that dreadful voice again. "Here, I will give it to you."

The Well of Sorrows surged up over my head, and I drowned in it again.

I drifted through murky depths with no awareness of time, submerged in incomprehensible mutterings, unable to do anything but let the water fill my lungs and surround me. A fragmented light glimmered high above me, its rays barely penetrating to the bottom. A thought that I vaguely recognized as my own floated past me: _This isn't so bad. At least I don't have to make any decisions while I'm here._

Then a hand broke the placid surface of the Well and reached down to me.

I blinked in confusion but then heard a muffled, familiar voice speaking. "Take my hand, _ma vhenan_." Understanding flooded into me - _dreaming all along, of course, I've been in the Fade all this time!_ \- and I struggled toward the real Solas, clumsily flailing my limbs against an unseen current, until his fingers closed around my wrist and he pulled me upwards into the light.

As soon as I emerged from the water, I pitched forward and landed on my hands and knees in the suddenly dry basin of the Well, coughing and sputtering. The jagged, splintered shafts of the dream-sentinels' arrows protruded from my torso at vicious angles, but Solas lightly touched each one in turn until they vanished with a final brief ripple of imagined pain. He pulled me to my feet and I collapsed, shuddering, against him. His posture was so rigid that I knew something was wrong even before the servants of Mythal resumed their deafening, urgent wailing. "Tell me how to stop this," I choked out, clutching my aching temples.

Solas backed away, holding me at arm's length. The sorrow I had seen in him after we came through the _eluvian_ had only deepened since our brief encounter in Skyhold's garden. "I cannot," he said, the words heavy with regret.

"Can't, or won't?" I spat, and wished immediately that I hadn't.

He shook his head slowly and sadly, and the defeated slump of his shoulders stung me more intensely than any degree of anger or outrage. "I do not seek to punish you for your actions at the _vir'abelasan_. Nor do I intend to gloat, if that is what you mean. Yet in truth, I should not be here now. I fear my presence will only make matters worse for you."

"Why would you ever think that?" I reached up to touch his face, but he flinched away from my fingertips. "I said you were always welcome in my dreams, and that hasn't changed. I need you more than ever now, _ma sa'lath_."

"And that is exactly why I must not mislead you!" Now Solas wrenched himself free of my grip entirely and stalked to the opposite side of the Well. He clenched his fists impotently at his sides. "I can sense you in the Fade. I can help to calm your nightmares, as I have just done. But I cannot master the Well for you. I cannot tame its servants or rid you of its influence. And you must not ever think that such a feat is within my power. In the end, you will suffer the consequences of your decision alone." His voice sank to a harsh, jagged whisper. "I cherish your freedom more than anything. But I cannot free a slave who willingly forged her own chains and then threw away their key."

"I know that." Tears clouded my vision as one of my own memories crept in: _Cole pursuing Solas through Skyhold, begging to be bound, crying out, "It isn't abuse if I ask!" And Solas's flat response: "Not always true." Does he think I have made myself into what Wisdom became, into what Cole feared he would become?_ "But it isn't real freedom if I'm not free to get things wrong."

"I know that, too," said Solas, almost inaudibly.

"Not that I'm even sure I got it wrong." The Well quieted abruptly, as if every soul inside it were awaiting my next words. "I thought it was my heritage as an elf. I thought it would help me learn the truth about my people. Maybe it still will. I don't like what it's doing to me, Solas. I wish there had been another way to get what we needed. I think I started asking myself whether I should have just let Morrigan have it before I even finished drinking." A harsh laugh escaped my throat. "But I don't know what she wanted with it. Not that I know what I'll do with it either, but I trust myself more than I trust her. And I'm not sure I would choose any differently if I could do it all over again." Solas continued to watch me without reacting. My shoulders sagged. "I suppose that's it, then. I won't apologize, and you won't forgive. So we're done here, aren't we?"

Traces of some half-hidden inner conflict lingered in the depths of Solas's eyes, but there was nothing hesitant in his movements when he crossed the empty Well to put his arms around me. "There is nothing to forgive," he said, hoarse with emotion. "And none of this will be enough to keep me from you." Another memory bubbled up, unbidden: _Solas, newly returned to Skyhold from the Exalted Plains, when Wisdom's loss was still recent and excruciating. Both of us longing to close the distance between us in the courtyard, neither of us yet willing to take the first step. "I could hardly abandon you now."_ "I said that I could not undo what you have done. I did not mean that I will not walk beside you while you learn to live with it. Perhaps not forever. But for now. As you once promised me."

"Then you're not angry with me?" I tried to keep the relief out of my tone, but knew it was all too obvious in the way I suddenly found myself clinging to him.

" _Ma vhenan,_ I am furious with you." The chaste kiss that he placed on my forehead was spoiled by the way he stroked the contours of my ear. "But I will vent that anger later, and elsewhere."

"And to someone other than me, I hope?"

"I will not promise that," Solas said with a slight smile. "But I am here for tonight, and I will try to help you, if you will only tell me how."

I looked into his eyes and felt a spark of intense desire, burning brightly in spite of everything that had happened and everything I had done. I brought my lips to his in a gentle, experimental kiss, and I was not sure what pleased me more: that Solas kissed me back, or that the voices of the Well remained utterly silent while he did. I broke away long enough to say, "I don't want to talk right now. The less I think, the less it says. Help me not to think for a while, Solas. We can worry about what all of this means later."

His mouth was on mine again as soon as I finished speaking. I knew that much remained unsaid between us, and that he still wanted to say it - but I also knew that he still wanted _me_. I knew it by the slow explorations of his tongue, by the way his hands gripped my waist and pulled me closer to him. He wanted to lose himself too, to forget everything that awaited us on the other side of the Veil as badly as I did, even if only for a single borrowed moment. Together, we channeled all of our anger and fear and sadness and uncertainty into hungry kisses and desperate caresses. Our world began and ended at the boundaries of our bodies, until the Well of Sorrows seemed as far from me as it had been before I entered the Temple of Mythal.

I sensed the setting of my dream shifting again. The light dimmed around us, and the sound of humming insects and the smell of pine needles and damp soil filled the air. I opened my eyes as Solas began to trail small kisses along my neck and chuckled as I recognized the shadowy shapes of the tall trees by night, the familiar rock formations, the statue of Fen'Harel resting on its flat rocky shelf at the edge of the clearing in which we stood. "Brings back memories," I said. Solas raised his eyebrows in curiosity, so I explained, "Clan Lavellan used to spend winters near here. Everyone knew this was a good place to get away from camp and be alone with someone. So in the Fade, I suppose it makes sense that - ah!"

I gasped as Solas slid his thigh between my legs and rubbed it against me. "I thought you didn't want to talk anymore." I grinned and leaned into him, guiding him backwards between fierce kisses until I pressed him into the base of the Fen'Harel statue. "How blasphemous," he said, teasingly and with feigned innocence, as my hands went to work on the lacing of his breeches.

It amazed me how quickly we resumed our familiar patterns of passion, even with the Well and all it represented continuing to loom between us. "What?" I said as I knelt in front of him. "Are you afraid the Dread Wolf might catch your scent?"

"Not especially…" The last word melted into a sharp intake of breath as I took him in my hand and mouth and began a steady rhythm, enjoying the small sounds I drew from him and the increasingly urgent motion of his hips. Too soon I felt his gentle fingertips on the top of my head. " _Vhenan, isalan hima na_."

I stood up, brushing dirt and dry leaves from my knees, unsurprised to discover that at some point my dream had done away with our clothing. "Tell me it won't be the last time," I said. The crescent moon in the sky provided just enough light for me to see regret steal across his face. _He can't promise me that, either._ So I let him turn me around to embrace me from behind. His lips were on my ears and neck, his hand stroking my breast and then sliding lower. I knew I would start crying if I looked at him again.

Instead, I closed my eyes and arched into Solas's touch, grinding against him, letting pleasure drive away my worries. I went down on all fours in the shadow of the Fen'Harel statue, and I cried out as he entered me. He reached around and sent his long fingers dancing over my center in time with each forceful thrust of his hips. I was climaxing before I knew it, and my own ecstasy quickly sent him over the edge to spill himself inside me.

We remained connected for long, silent moments, until Solas withdrew and lay down next to me on the ground, curling his body around mine as our shared bliss faded. I nestled against his chest and realized that the Well's voices had dwindled to a faint, muted mumble. "I can barely hear them," I breathed. "What did you do?"

"Nothing apart from the obvious." He kissed the tip of my ear. "In time, I'm sure you will develop other methods to calm the _vir'abelasan_ that need not involve me so directly."

"I wouldn't object to you staying involved," I said, and felt the heat of his soft laughter on my neck. _"Ar lath ma."_

"And I you," he replied without hesitation, and I let myself begin to believe that I hadn't lost him yet. "Take the peace you have found for now and rest. You badly need it."

"I know." Already my mind was preparing for a deeper phase of slumber, darkening the woods around me, softening the mossy ground on which I lay. "Will you stay until I fall asleep?"

I thought I heard him whisper, "Forever," but the dream disintegrated into nothingness before I could reply. After that I was not aware of anything - not the Well, not the nightmares, not Solas slipping away from me and into his own secret corners of the Fade - until I woke to bright sunlight and a cold mountain breeze and the sheets of my own bed winding around my limbs like the chains Solas claimed I had placed upon my own soul.

I took my time returning to full alertness, staring up at the ceiling, considering everything. I could feel the Well, insistent and intrusive, ceaselessly prodding at the inside of my skull - but it was contained now, no longer at the forefront of my every thought and action unless I deliberately drew it out. At first I wondered if I had Solas to thank for that, but the very suggestion seemed to incite an angry outburst from a few of the voices. "Very well, I won't sell myself short, then," I said to no one in particular, and felt their clamor recede. _If this really is as much of a cage as Solas says, I suppose I'm learning to live within it._

I knew that I had a few days before my advisors returned to Skyhold to involve me in a new crisis, so I lingered in my quarters until late morning. I broke the thin film of frost that had formed over the ewer on my nightstand and washed with the icy water inside, put on clean clothing, and slowly nibbled on the stale bread and pungent cheese left over on my table from the night before. I didn't doubt that Cassandra was downstairs, wondering how I had slept and planning to fill me in on everything I had missed, but she could wait. I had another matter to attend to first.

Just as I had expected, as soon as I entered the main hall, the guard that Cassandra had stationed at my door immediately left his post to inform her that I had emerged. I nodded crisply to him and continued on my way. _Let him tell Cassandra I'm awake and moving so she can stop worrying. When he tells her where I'm going, she'll know better than to interrupt._

Fear gripped my guts as I approached the rotunda - _what if he isn't here?_ \- but vanished as soon as I entered. Solas stood in the same place where I had found him so many times before, contemplating the vibrant walls with his back to the door. He had already begun the next panel of his fresco, sketching in the outlines of gnarled trees and temple archways and the broad twisting river winding through the middle of it all. He hadn't noticed my arrival yet. I watched him lift his brush to trace a symbol at the center, saw the sluggishness of his movements, and realized, _He must have been working on it all night. He can't have slept at all after he left me in the Fade._

Something in the Well began to scream at me again as I moved toward him - but it was nothing but an echo of my nightmares, a ragged cry of _you should be pleased to know so little_ , and I pushed it firmly aside. Solas and I had a difficult conversation ahead of us, but I was tired of not knowing its outcome, even if the knowledge I sought from him might cause me more pain. I was tired of living in the space between "forever" and "for now," unsure of which one I should expect. And so I would not take another step until I knew whether he would take it with me.

I hesitated for only a moment more, taking in the long lines of his body, the deft motions of his hands, the unexpected beauty that surrounded us. Then I reached out and tapped him on the shoulder, ready to hear him and to be heard, ready to awaken into whatever came next.

**Author's Note:**

> Translations for Elvhen phrases beyond the standard ones are as follows:
> 
> Ar manan - Din. Fenedhis. = I'm waiting for - No. Fuck.  
> Ame tel'da'len. = I'm not a child.  
> Nya undalas em'an. Halam sahlin. = You have killed us. This ends now.  
> Isalan hima na. = I lust to become you.
> 
> In coming up with these translations, I am greatly indebted to [FenxShiral's impressive work on expanding Elvhen into a full constructed language](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3553883).
> 
> Story title taken from the song ["Empire of Our State" by Girlyman.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar9BFEM-FKc) Let's not talk about the number of times I've listened to it over the past few months while drowning in intrusive Solavellan feels.


End file.
